But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune seventy times in succession,... because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is... created by the media. The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Between a sign and the thing it signifies there is the fixed, determined relationship of cause and effect. We see this in the case... of the footprint in the sand, the tear on the eyelash, or the trademark of a commercial product. But no matter how closely tied a symbol is to the thing symbolized, the relation is variable, flexible, and free. It is in poetry, however, that the symbolic value of words reaches its apex. The cross has become the symbol of Christianity not because of its form but because the Christians, following St. Paul, at a definite moment in their history, decided to adopt the instrument of Christ's torture as their emblem. Similarly, the relation between a word and its meaning depends on its origin, its history, and its usage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two ban...al dimensions, drained of color. Wasn't there something reassuring about it!--that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another's eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms--nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Out of the darkness where Philomela sat,Her fairy numbers issued. What then ailed me?...My ears are called capacious but they failed me,Her classics registered a little flat!I rose, and venomously spat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,Live registered upon our brazen tombs,...And then grace us in the disgrace of death;When spite of cormorant devouring Time,Th' endeavor of this present breath may buyThat honor which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,And make us heirs of all eternity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting... that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner's jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »